Meta name robots content noarchive tag usage

Meta name robots content noarchive is a html tag declared inside of html head. It is used to tell a search engine not to cache the particular page. You might have noticed that whenever you put your mouse over a search result, You will see a screenshot of the website. Like it is google search and other search engines also indexing websites and showing cached data in result.

Syntax

What is the purpose of noarchive?

As I said, noarchive is used to prevent search engines from keeping cached version of your web page and showing it to the users.
So your web page with noarchive tag will not be cached by search engines.

Advantages

When your web page’s contents are being changed frequently, It is useful to use noarchive meta tag.

Some websites may have products to sell and they may change the rates. In that case, noarchive meta tag is very useful.
Otherwise users may see the old prices in result which will lead to miss understanding.

Disadvantages

Caching is useful when your site is down. User can see your site from cached version. This will be stopped when you use noarchive meta tag.

It is useful to users to see a preview before visiting a site. This also will be affected of noarchive.

Will noarchive affects search engine indexing?

No, It will not affect the indexing of your page. It will only tell the search engine to omit caching the site.

Which search engines are supporting noarchive tag?

All major searchengines are supporting meta name robots content noarchive tag.Google

So, Is it useful or not?

I would say it depends upon the type of your websites. If you’re having a static website where the content is being updated once in a while, then you can omit the robots noarchive meta tag. But if your website contents are being changed frequently then you can use meta name robots content noarchive tag.